2. THE CITY OF EDINBURGH AND SIMILAR ANALOGIES 3

11 |Patrick Geddes and F.C. Mears, The beginnings of the first human settlements as a hill fort.

13 |Patrick Geddes and F.C. Mears, The early town of Edinburgh surrounded by the King’s Wall in 1450 A.D. 12 |Zaid Prasla, The present city of Edinburgh

14 |Patrick Geddes and F.C. Mears, The two cities of Edinburgh As Rome, the city of Edinburgh can also be considered as a living memory of its past with the dust of the old city accumulating onto the modern one. Patrick Geddes, a Scottish town planner and biologist uses similar techniques to Piranesi’s study of Campo Marzio to survey the city of Edinburgh. As Piranesi proposes to record history as ruins and decay through strategic moments in the past, Geddes also envisages the city of Edinburgh not only through the contemporary methodologies of previous surveyors but rather by connecting the modern city with its origins, geographically and historically, tracing the progress of the city through strategic periods of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Industrial ages and recording the city through its former and later developments in each era12 (see Fig. 11 and 12).

Therefore, in order to excavate artifacts of ancient Edinburgh, it is a prerequisite to understand the city’s history in some degree. Geddes’s survey offers that reading of the city from its origins to the contemporary era. The first human settlements in the city can be traced back to the beginnings of the town as merely a hill fort at Castle Rock with a small fishing dock at Leith across the agricultural plains of the Lothian. The city was a small agricultural village with farming and animal husbandry as the main occupation of the people. During this period, as the city grew, more land belonging to the vegetal world was replaced by new agricultural farms and houses confined to the High Street from the Castle Rock to the Canongate. The city was surrounded by the King’s Wall as a defence against enemy attacks from the south and the ‘Nor Loch’ to the north13 (see Fig. 13).

As we enter the Middle Ages, we see Scotland in a state of constant conflict with England and in the events that followed in the wake of the disastrous Battle of Flodden in 1513, the city saw the rapid construction of the Flodden Wall around the Cowgate and Grassmarket which was outside the boundaries of the King’s Wall. Due to scenario of an imminent war, the citizens started taking refuge within the safety of the walls causing the city to build over the existing city, deteriorating the once spacious open-air houses in the Old Town to a slumlike condition with buildings within close proximity of one another.14

The Industrial Age saw the Old Town to decay further into a state of ‘ruin’, neglected by the council and left to die as people moved to the New Town across the Loch which was built for the increasing population of high-class citizens belonging to city nobles, merchants, and lawyers. The New Town yet lacked the basic backbone of workshops and factories which were still located in the Old Town which became a place of ancillary services filled with filth and diseases and occupied by the poorest communities of the city.15 The city therefore became two cities where one city belonged to the rich and the other belonged to the poor (see Fig. 14).

12 Patrick Geddes and F.C. Mears, The Civic Survey of Edinburgh. (Edinburgh: Civics Department, Outlook Tower, 1911). p. 537.

13 Ibid. p. 542- 548.

14 Ibid. p. 548- 550.

15 Ibid. p. 557.

3. EXCAVATION OF EDINBURGH

The following study of the city and its history provided the strategic moments in time that is required to reconstruct the ruins of Edinburgh’s past in a fragmented trace. With the introduction of a new networks of architectural agencies in the city, the project revisualizes the city as a series of enzymatic territories where the excavation of the city and the architecture can be read in relation to one another. These agencies are envisioned as the architecture of the future, an intervention by the future city on the ‘artificial’ urban stratum in 2050 A.D. It is the intention of the thesis to deliver the city potential sites of excavation in the future. The location of these agencies is therefore situated along strategic landmarks along the Cowgate which have a rich history, that is Grassmarket, George IV Bridge, South Bridge and Holyrood Park with other potential sites of excavations to be explored in the future (see Fig.15).

The concept of ‘Artificial Excavation’ here diverts significantly from Peter Eisenman’s concept. While Eisenman focuses on artificial devices like grids to excavate the ground and to also recreate artificial fragments of memories which might not even exist on site, the thesis on the other hand focuses on the concept of archaeology as a device for excavation.16 The traces discovered in Edinburgh’s ground holds these memories in reality and grounds the project in an actual context of history as Piranesi does in his project of Rome. The term ‘artificial’ here identifies the ground, that is the man-made superficial urban layer which holds these memories (see Fig. 1 and 2). The excavation of these memories therefore generates a fictional reality, a reality nonetheless, which is seen as an archaeological milieu, a narration of the city’s historical fragments that are continuously superposed on top of one another in the near future.

16 For reference regarding Peter Eisenman and his concept of ‘Artificial Excavation’, please refer to chapter 6 of the archive. Excavation Site 01: Grassmarket

Excavation Site 02: George IV Bridge

Excavation Site 03: South Bridge

Excavation Site 04: Holyrood Park

15 |Zaid Prasla, The locations of the excavation sites along the Cowgate (2050 A.D.)

3. EXCAVATION OF EDINBURGH

3.1. A NEW VEGETAL WORLD

Today we live in a heavily artificial world surrounding ourselves with glooming walls and isolating our lives from the diverse world of colours and scents of plants belonging to the ecological being. The theme of the project thus aims to build in association with this ecological world of plants which is excavated in the city projecting the architecture and the new urban design within the memory of the ancient forest which once covered the entirety of Scotland.17

In an era of climate emergency, the need of the lost ecological world becomes more crucial than ever for the survival of human race as well as endangered plants and animal species. Human intervention through time by pollution and no regards for the realms of the vegetal being has led to global climatic changes which affects our daily weather patterns causing few parts of the world like Sahara to turn into a dry desert while on the other hand places like the UK today experiences more wetter conditions and stronger heatwaves than it used to before cities took over the forests. Such adverse conditions will sooner or later make places unsafe and unhabitable for both plants and humans.18 Therefore, the thesis aims to display a project where the urban territories and the ecological world can co-exist together as one universal garden, a space of appearing where the city exists to be in a forest and a forest appears to be in a city through a series of archaeological excavations.19

The need for a vegetal world has always been increasing in the cities. As the forest was replaced with the urban world and as our lives became more cramped with walls inching closer and closer, human beings started returning to the world of plants to find solace and to breathe freely. The green areas of the gardens and the parks in the city such as the Princes Street Gardens (see Fig. 16 ) therefore became a site for recreational activities – a site to retreat from the busy city life, away from the pollution and the noise enabling us to forget our daily stresses and our problems and to recover our health in the comfort of the vegetal world. Luce Irigaray in her correspondence with Michael Marder described a similar situation and her sacred relationship with the vegetal being in the form of a garden which she found refuge in as a child surrounding herself in a world of living consisting of plants and animals. Plants are also markers of history as many plants might be standing for centuries silently witnessing the rise and fall of great cities throughout the world. The Holyrood Park (see Fig. 17) in the city of Edinburgh is such an example where the world of plants acts as mnemonic device of memory recording the events of the past and the growth of the city through time form its earliest human settlements to the city as we know it today. Therefore, it becomes important to visualise the park as a catalyst for the introduction of the ‘New Caledonian Forest’ in the city.

17 Dr. Dorian Wiszniewski, in ‘Project Brief 2 2020-2021’, in PARA-situation [Edinburgh]: “The Space of Appearing” Brief 2: FABB/PARA Agencies – A study and Agency for revitalizing, maintaining, and managing the New Caledonian Forest. (Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh, ESALA, 2021). p.8. Also see, Michael Marder, in ‘ A Recovery of the Amazing Diversity of Natural Presence’, in Through Vegetal Being. p. 149.

18 Michael Marder, “The Generative Potential of the Elements”, in Through Vegetal Being. p. 137-140.

19 Dr. Dorian Wiszniewski, in ‘Project Brief 3 2020-2021’, in PARA-situation [Edinburgh]: “The Space of Appearing” Brief 3: Thesis and Archive. (Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh, ESALA, 2021). p. 5.

16 |Zaid Prasla, The Princes Street Gardens, New Town, Edinburgh.